Essays on Anglo-Indian Literature

Book excerpt: Contains fine examples of Anglo-Indian literature. The original books were written at various periods in the history of Anglo-Indian literature. The first two chapters are attempts to provide an overview of the beginning and the growth in Anglo-Indian prose and poetry. When Bishop Heber wrote his Journals, he described in detail what he saw and understood in India. The chapter on his Journals contains an analysis of Heber's presentation of the socio-economic-cultural condition of India in the early nineteenth century. The essay on Twenty-One Days in India analyses as to how an Englishman smiled at his own countrymen in colonial India. The behavioural peculiarities of the characters are brought into focus, examined and then mildly satirised. This book is reminiscent of the vignettes that were published during the Victorian period in England. The tetralogy The Near and the Far of L.H. Myers is, among others, exemplary of the author's understanding of the orient. The chapter on this novel is an analysis of the orientalism of the author.